Early this year, I raised the alarm about the poor knowledge and
attitude, by both patients and some medical practitioners, about the
endemic called hepatitis in Nigeria. Less than 24 hours after the
article was published in Daily Trust and The PUNCH, I got no
less than 100 emails from Nigerians on this disease. I had always
questioned the veracity of public statistics, but the gale of email
messages I received made me to change my stand: those statistics by the
World Health Organisation and other agencies about the prevalence of one
disease or another are not far from real. While reading up on hepatitis
shortly after I was diagnosed in 2009, I got to know that more than 400
million people are infected the world over and 20 million in Nigeria. I
doubted it, but now I am convinced. 20 million means 1 out of every 7
Nigerians has hepatitis. It’s no longer about some pseudo-researchers
sitting in one air-conditioned room and fabricating statistics, it is
very real. I have received emails from no less than 200 Nigerians, 95
per cent of whom are also hepatitis patients, since my article was
published. I still receive till now from people that must have bumped
into the piece recently.
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